Samsung Phone Owners Warned: Save Your Photos Now (forbes.com) 58
Samsung smartphone owners are facing a looming deadline to rescue their photos from Samsung Cloud or risk losing backed up images. From a report: Samsung is removing the option to back up your photo gallery to Samsung Cloud, presumably in a bid to cut storage costs. Samsung Cloud will still continue to back up data such as contacts, calendar entries and notes, but photos and videos are no longer part of the package. Samsung has instead been encouraging customers to back up their photos using Microsoft's OneDrive service, but the deadline is looming for the Samsung Cloud service to be cut off, with customers warned they could lose photos if they don't have copies of them stored locally. Confusingly, Samsung has split customers into two groups, each with different cut-off deadlines. It's not easy to work out which group you're in, so it's probably safest to assume you're in Group 1, which has the earliest set of cut-off deadlines.
This is Google's fault (Score:2, Offtopic)
a bit late on the warning (Score:1)
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but the empty suits says The Cloud is where it's a (Score:3)
Everything has to go to "the cloud", we're told at work, and we're shoveling it all uphill.
But parts of The Cloud have been taking a shit a lot lately. Every now and then can't get to major cloud vendor's admin portal, mail doesn't arrive for an hour or more for whole company,
Wonder if we'll have a big move to shovel it all back ...
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But the cloud is really handy for storing one's pollution.
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we outsource that to China, so they're the ones living with the yellow and brown clouds, and getting the blame for co2. Genius!
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Hey, it all pays the same. Shoddy services have been job security for IT departments for decades.
Breaking the Internet... (Score:3)
Does the user have to use their last mile bandwidth to move Samsung-to-home-to-OneDrive? It would make more sense if they allowed a direct connect between Samsung and OneDrive, so this could be pushbutton.
Even with no photos... (Score:2)
Even with 0 photos stored in Samsung cloud (as far as I can tell), I've been presented with numerous warnings and dark-pattern modal dialog boxes to move to OneDrive.
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This and other free boutique cloud operations shutting down is reminiscent of when everyone and their cousin were offering free email accounts. I was job hunting and had about 200 resumes out when McAfee Mail shut down with ten days notice. With no forwarding offered I essentially had to start my job search over.
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Get your own domain name, ideally hosted somewhere properly, but even if you just forward it to a free gmail address, its worth having.
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You lost all IT cred with you mentioned "McAfee Mail" and a gmail account in your /. header.
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You lost all IT cred with you mentioned "McAfee Mail" and a gmail account in your /. header.
Perhaps like me he has a gmail address purely to hand out to anyone who demands his email address. There must be a mountain of crap in mine by now, but I wouldn't know.
But how will they copy Apple? (Score:2)
Don't they need to offer cloud storage for photos so they can copy Apple's latest child porn scanning feature? Man, Samsung is really phoning it in lately.
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Heh, I have a Huawei phone, no bloatware there, oh wait.(punctuation) dot dot dot dot (dot dot dot looks like ASCII art FFS?)
Live by the cloud, Die by the cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone need another reminder that the Cloud is Someone Elses Computer?
How many pictures do you actually have on a Cloud Server?
Either move your photos to a nearby computer, or buy some storage so you can keep them on some physical (local) stuff.
I just checked, almost 1Gb of photos on my local NAS. 0 on any cloud services, except where I shared some stuff on Flicker from way back when I cared to share.
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When I get home, I have an app that detects the local dual drive NAS I use, authenticates from there, then backs up all photos to it. This works no matter what, and the data stays either physically at home, or gets encrypted via Borg Backup on its way to Borgbase, so I have some 3-2-1 offsite protection, although having a NAS at another location should be better. That way, if some photo cloud based service shuts down, it doesn't matter to me. With this in place, images can't magically become stock photos
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Does anyone need another reminder that the Cloud is Someone Elses Computer?
</discussion>
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I quit trying to run all this hardware and UPS tech at home to backup my stuff. What happens when your NAS fails, fire, flood, theft (it is encrypted right?) etc? To mitigate that you have to then make another copy somewhere else, then you have to refresh all this hardware every few years, and pay for the electricity it uses.
I live in Apple world and it goes something like this, I pay for $200GB of iCloud which amounts to spare change in cost. All my photos and other stuff goto iCloud. My main machine at ho
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Freeloading puts your data at risk.
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Does anyone need another reminder that the Cloud is Someone Elses Computer?
Well I followed Russia's example [slashdot.org] and built my own internet so now everything is mine.
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Either move your photos to a nearby computer, or buy some storage so you can keep them on some physical (local) stuff.
The ol' throw it on your home machine as an alternative to a cloud service suggestion. And when you need to look at one of your pictures it's as easy as calling the wife, asking her to boot up the home PC, go into the NAS, and telling her to describe the vision she sees to you over the phone.
Car analogy: Ford just told people to drive a Chevy instead, and you came along and said this is why people should quit their jobs so they don't need a car.
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And when you need to look at one of your pictures it's as easy as calling the wife, asking her to boot up the home PC, go into the NAS, and telling her to describe the vision she sees to you over the phone.
It's terrible! I can't believe that nobody [synology.com] has ever [qnap.com] attempted [asustor.com] to provide [nextcloud.com] a solution [seafile.com] that can run [piwigo.com] on your own storage. [github.com]
It's a total mystery as to how ONLY Samsung and Microsoft and Google can handle this particular problem!
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Yeah great solutions there. 7 software packages that are a fucking nightmare to setup for anyone not well inversed with technology, and outright don't work for many people due to the design of their internet connection.
Here's a comparison:
- My mother's phone automagically uploads her pictures to Google photos. This required her clicking a button.
- My phone required me to download Seafile, manually enter a server address, an address which I needed to apply for and configure online because god knows I'm not g
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So fine, in your case, Seafile was a nonstarter due to the level of manual setup. The first two listed, Synology and QNAP, do DDNS setup for you during setup. They have tools to autoconfigure your router as well, they provide a relay service for exactly the situation you specify, and there is zero text file editing at all. There's even phone numbers you can call to get actual support from actual human beings who will help you set it up. I'll grant you that it's not the sort of "single checkbox" solution tha
Cloud is a tool, not a religion (Score:2)
Does anyone need another reminder that the Cloud is Someone Elses Computer?
Yup, fuck the cloud. I WANT to lose a few week's worth of photos and data if I drop my phone in the toilet or it's stolen. I want to constantly have my device lock up because it's out of storage, forcing me to decide what I can offload so my disk doesn't overflow. I like going to my work computer and being frustrated because I remembered something I wanted was on my home computer. I LOVE copying mp3s everywhere I go....listening to 6month old music in my car because one of these days, I am going to burn
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Does anyone need another reminder that the Cloud is Someone Elses Computer?
Yup, fuck the cloud. I WANT to lose a few week's worth of photos and data if I drop my phone in the toilet or it's stolen. I want to constantly have my device lock up because it's out of storage, forcing me to decide what I can offload so my disk doesn't overflow. I like going to my work computer and being frustrated because I remembered something I wanted was on my home computer. I LOVE copying mp3s everywhere I go....listening to 6month old music in my car because one of these days, I am going to burn some new tracks onto a disc for my car's mp3 player. I love having to plug everything I own into one specific computer a few times a week to ensure everything is synced consistently!! You complain like an old guy (like me), but you seem to have forgotten what life was like 15 years ago.
Every major disruptive innovation has upsides and downsides. I have a commercial NAS device. I have a cool Linux homemade NAS customized and optimized to my use cases. I have a dropbox account. My NASs have been unplugged for a few years. I keep meaning to give them away. I like the cloud. I like not having to buy computers or devices with giant disks for my music collection. I like paying a LOT LESS in monthly fees for Dropbox than the cost of a basic synology NAS. That's just me. It's not a solution for everyone.
For some reason, people think technology is mandatory, like a religion. The cloud is a cool tool. Use it when it works, use something else when something else works better. If you have 60TB of data you rarely access, yeah, Dropbox doesn't make sense, a NAS does. When you have
Maybe Dropbox or one of it's competitors isn't the fit for you and maybe the NASs all have this feature these days....but it's a tool, not a religion. It's convenient for me. It works for me...do what works for you.
If you're giving away your NAS devices, let me know. I'll take another couple so I can use them for backups at my relatives homes.
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I'll take another couple so I can use them for backups at my relatives homes.
How much are you charging them for that service?
In all seriousness, I'd pay for a relative's iCloud/OneDrive/ subscription before volunteering to be sysadmin to a NAS in their home. Being responsible for the backups of someone's treasured memories is a significant responsibility, and needs to be taken more seriously than I'm willing/able to. Apple/Microsoft/Google are going to provide a service that is more resilient, easier to use, and more cost effective for >99% of home users.
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I'll take another couple so I can use them for backups at my relatives homes.
How much are you charging them for that service?
In all seriousness, I'd pay for a relative's iCloud/OneDrive/ subscription before volunteering to be sysadmin to a NAS in their home. Being responsible for the backups of someone's treasured memories is a significant responsibility, and needs to be taken more seriously than I'm willing/able to. Apple/Microsoft/Google are going to provide a service that is more resilient, easier to use, and more cost effective for >99% of home users.
Not for their backups, another site or two for my backups.
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Long ago I used to do customer facing tech support stuff for the public. Let me tell you how the average person does this.
Most people just keep their photos on their phone. If he app backs it up then great, those photos move to their new phone. If the app doesn't... Well they don't know how to move them. Some of the smarter ones might email the best ones to themselves, or remember that they posted it all on Facebook so it's "saved" there.
Cloud storage is the only hope they have of keeping anything long term
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Apparently, I do. I don't take many pictures with my Samsung tablet and I haven't seen these warnings.
Maybe because I've never chosen to "back up your photo gallery to Samsung Cloud". It's definitely something I should look into though. I have a lot of pictures to backup and sift through, most of which I will probably delete. There are things I've taken 6 photos of where 4 or 5 of the photos aren't really worth saving.
I need to backup the good ones and get rid of the bad. My phone has even more pictures, w
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Because some of us don't like to put important documents that we want to keep on the cheapest shitty storage possible with zero redundancy.
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Photos on your phone are "important documents"?
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You don't get to decide what's important to other people.
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Apparently at least one person who downvoted you but I'm not that person.
I do use uSD cards, back up at home, and also use the cloud. Anything important enough goes to archival DVD burned at slowest speed available for best burn (I learned that burning live CDs since 1999) with multiple tested copies. Hard drives being trivially cheap I don't wipe and reinstall, I remove intact then upgrade (and since all my hosts are Linux it's no big deal to swap drives and boot from my backups as desired).
Either my data
Question (Score:2)
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Yes, kind of. Until that drive dies, or you junk the machine and forget the drive is in there, or (our situation) you backup all your photos and never bother to delete them from the phone so have a dozen or more copies of the same thing and the folders get so huge you don't even want to look at what's in them.
Now a question from me. My wife got a Mac and the frelling thing has no USB-A port. She needs an expensive proprietary cable to copy her photos to it, doesn't she? Or is iCloud the only way to do i
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That's a USB-C? I assumed it was their stupid proprietary connector. Thanks.
didn't trust it, never used it, glad now (Score:2)
I've owned Samsungs, either personally or issued through work, back to the Note 3. Never used Samsung's backup for anything. Either migrated photos to the sdcard and from there to a safe place, or downloaded them directly to the desktop. (Desktop backup is a second removable drive which periodically gets replaced and migrated to a friend's fire safe for primitive DR.) Never ever used a vendor's "free" cloud backup, for precisely this reason -- you never know when it's gonna go away.
Or get broken into.
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It's important to remember, there is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer. With all the access and security issues that involves.
Yeah. Which means for 99.9% of people out there, better access restrictions and security than they themselves are capable of.
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It's important to remember, there is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer. With all the access and security issues that involves.
Yeah. Which means for 99.9% of people out there, better access restrictions and security than they themselves are capable of.
Maybe. Most of the time. But they're a high value target, too. Break into it once, and get access to gazillions of accounts.
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Indeed they are, and yet highly competently segregated as evidence from the many years of attacks only ever gaining access to individual accounts often due to a configuration error by the customer themselves.
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Indeed they are, and yet highly competently segregated as evidence from the many years of attacks only ever gaining access to individual accounts often due to a configuration error by the customer themselves.
You're thinking of the icloud debacle. That's true. As a counter argument, though, I'd bring up the plethora of successful attacks on company customer information, even MEDICAL information, often because the people who set it up did stupid things like leave in a default or easily defeated password.
One expects cloud employees to be more educated and diligent regarding security than the average user. It's a reasonable expectation. But when it comes right down to it, they are also only human.
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As a counter argument, though, I'd bring up the plethora of successful attacks on company customer information
Nope, that's not a counter argument, that's evidence for my argument. To date there's been no successful attack on cloud infrastructure that has mass exposed cloud customers, only targeted attacks on individual customers that has not been able to directly cause another customer to be exposed.
Who was using this? (Score:2)
We've all seen device manufacturers do this, HTC Samsung, LG, they've all taken a stab at cloud services and when nobody signed up to them, and certainly nobody paid for them... then they all shut down. Where was the business model?!?!?
They were always going to shut down.
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If Samsung ever wants to be a truly premium brand they need to offer a full stack of non Google dependent services with their phones. They are not there by a long shot, but cloud backup is certainly part of it. Samsung could in theory make Android a perfectly viable and private system even with the play store still installed ... just don't use Google's shit.
If they want to just be a mostly interchangeable manufacturer of Android phone flavours, this gets them closer to that goal.
Smart move? (Score:2)
Never... (Score:1)
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Offsite backup? I know it's trendy here on /. to hate on the cloud, but it's way easier to reliably back up your data than it used to be. Or do you miss physically rotating tape drives off-site?
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For most consumers the choice is "keep backups in the cloud" or "don't back it up at all". Cloud is the better choice there, no?
The Slashdot crowd is capable of setting up and maintaining their own backup solution. Some might even enjoy it. The vast, vast majority of people don't have the knowhow or interest to try it, let alone to get it right.
Sigh Samsung ... (Score:2)
Sometimes Samsung try to be a premium brand, then they turn around and take some chump change from Microsoft to annoy their customers.
Why does everyone in the industry have to work so hard to make Apple the only good normie brand? I don't like Apple for various reasons (fucking patent trolls, vertical integration is hell on innovation, app store monopoly etc) but because of the continued incompetence of mostly Samsung and Microsoft there's no normie alternatives which don't involve selling yourself to Googl
wait (Score:2)
Did Samsung offer an unlimited cloud picture storage?
Come on, people (Score:2)
Don't keep your sh*t on someone else's computer.